Infinix Note 4: My Perfect Travel Companion?

First things first, being a food blogger my profession keeps me on the go. I always need to carry my DSLR and smartphone, so that while I am dining out, cooking or visiting new restaurants I can share pictures instantly on my Instagram or on snapchat to connect and share with my followers. This is where I need a phone which not only has a great camera but also multitasking features that enables me for those instant clicks and live streaming!

There’s a bunch of smartphones out there and it’s surprising just how much they’re being loaded and stuffed with features, and even surprising to see their prices, which in turn appear to be falling quite rapidly. The Infinix Note 4 landed at our offices recently and we had an opportunity to see if it is worth the INR 8,999 price tag on Flipkart. Simply put, is it strong and smart enough compared to all the other phones out there, all of whom are competing for the same customer’s attention?

I therefore ditched my current phone and swapped it with the Infinix Note 4, for one whole day. Here’s what happened.

Design, Look and Feel

When one is used to using a certain phone and then suddenly is handed another, there’s usually a lag between then and actually becoming comfortable with the new phone’s way of doing things. Not so with the Infinix Note 4.

The Infinix Note 4 complies with the uniformity of visual design sported by most phones out there. A home button in the centre of the last row, which usually doubles as a fingerprint sensor and is a physical button, on either side of which button are two ‘soft’ buttons, one functioning as the ‘Back’ key and the other as the application switcher. Further, you’ll find a large 5.7 inches FHD IPS screen with excellent picture quality plus volume keys and a power key and grills for speakers with a single (mono) speaker.

I tend to roam about the outdoors a fair bit and the contrast performance of the phone meant I was easily able to view content on the Infinix Note 4 screen in bright daylight. They’ve also included a screen guard in the box, which I thought was a nice touch.

All the places I’m eating at, usually on the streets, means my phone is subject to a variety of light conditions and rough surfaces. This phone handled both quite well.

Actually Using the Phone

Speaking for myself, I prefer the classic Android user interface (UI) and some of the customisations some phone companies implement, don’t enhance the Android user experience, instead, making it more complex, for brand considerations. Sometimes, I just can’t find what I’m looking for! Not so with the Infinix Note 4.

The Infinix Note 4 runs on Android Nougat, with XOS 2.2 running as an overlay. In the case of this phone, the UI is mostly classic and if you’ve used Android in the past you’ll be just fine with this phone’s UI. I thought the inbuilt (but additional to standard Android) power management and security apps to be a nice touch.

Coming to performance, while most staple tasks, such as playing music, making calls, browsing your favourite social networking platforms, work well, some games which require high performance may not.

I like playing Clash of Clans and Dominations and while these are somewhat heavy games, they ran just fine on the Infinix Note 4.

Clicking Photos

Doing what I do, taking photos, especially of food and related subjects and activities, a good camera is a must have for any phone I’m using. Even better would be a phone that works well in low light environs. The Infinix Note 4 does both.

There are two cameras on the phone, no surprises there, with a 13MP rear camera and an 8MP front camera. There’s a flash on both sides, though the flash in the front isn’t as effective as one would like. It is however effective to a certain extent, as photos in low light do come out much better with the front flash, than without. I’ve used some other phones, in a similar price range that too claimed a front facing flash, but with dismal performance and little or no real effect on the quality of the resultant photograph. I’m happy to say that isn’t the case with the Infinix Note 4.

While the camera app has the usual list of modes and features, such as pausing video recording, smile recognition and so on, what I quite liked about the camera, is its low light performance.

At the end of the day, the camera captures low light photographs with a highly acceptable level of detail, which is great. I tried macro photos, food photos and the camera worked well in every situation, for the price point.

Sporting a massive 4,300mAh non-removable battery, the Infinix Note 4 managed to keep running for over 10 hours on a single charge. Depending on your usage, you will find the phone available between 8 hours (a whole working day) and a day and a half. For an under 10k phone, that’s pretty commendable. The phone provides two micro SIM slots as well as another, dedicated micro SD card slot, which is nice to see as a separate slot, rather than the hybrid slots quite a few phones choose to provide.

The battery is probably one of the single most important components of our phones, and regardless of features, if the battery isn’t up to the task, we might as well throw away the phone. This phone has it figured out with a nice, long lasting battery that kept me going.

Conclusion

The Infinix Note 4 is sturdy, well finished and packed with sturdy features for the price it is offered at. This phone will keep pace with most tasks you’ll throw at it.

Note: All photos, except those of the phone itself, were taken with the Infinix Note 4, all in low light conditions and without any processing.

Sid Khullar

Sid Khullar is the founder of Chef at Large, a blog that began in 2007. He enjoys cooking, writing, travelling and technology in addition to being a practising Freemason. Health and wellness is a particularly passionate focus. Sid prefers the company of food and animals to most humans, and can be reached at sid.khullar@chefatlarge.in.